The Los Angeles Times says that acting ATF head Kenneth Melson is resisting pressure to step down over the Gunwalker controversy. “Melson does not want to be ‘the fall guy’ for the program, under which ATF agents allowed straw purchasers to acquire more than 1,700 AK-47s and other high-powered rifles from Arizona gun dealers, the sources said.”

“He is saying he won’t go,” said one source close to the situation, who asked for anonymity because high-level discussions with Melson remained fluid. “He has told them, ‘I’m not going to be the fall guy on this.’ ”

Added a second source, who also requested anonymity: “He’s resisting. He does not want to go.”

Melson has an open invitation to appear on Capitol Hill. So far, he has not been given Justice Department approval to appear before Congress.

This occurred as allegations were flung back and forth about who knew what and when about a program which put thousands of weapons into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.

Rep. Darrell Issa’s office tells Newsmax that a published report claiming the California Republican was briefed about the “Fast and Furious” weapons operation is an “outright lie.”

The Washington Post on Tuesday stated that Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, was told of the operation, which allowed automatic weapons to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels, at an April 2010 meeting and raised no objection.issa, DOJ, fast, furious

But Issa spokesman Frederick Hill told Newsmax on Thursday that “what is reported in the Washington Post is an outright lie.

Press coverage of the scandal has so far been relatively light possibly because it has not yet attracted the attention of major political figures who are probably waiting to see whether the ice is thick enough to venture upon.

63 Comments, 63 Threads

Historically, a screw-up of this magnitude–with strong hints of absolutely nutty policy decisions at the highest levels–should have the press and congress in full bray looking for the highest-ranking person responsible.

Alas, these are far from normal times, and I’d have to bet that no one with a grade higher than GS-8 gets ousted. As always, the MSM has Obozo’s back.

Good for ATF head Melson, but will his resolve last? I predict that he will be given an incentive to resign quietly: a cushy well-paid job for life courtesy of George Soros. The Colombian drug gangs told people they wanted to influence: “Plomo o plata.” (Lead bullet or silver/money). While the Demos don’t do plomo very well, they have plenty of access to plata.

agree with sf@1 but if the designated fall guy ain’t gonna take one for the team this thing will probably develop legs. 1700 ak47′s is a lot of fire power. These things wil be killing people for some time. I would love to Holder’s fingerprints on this and suspect it would have had to go that high in the justice department if not higher for approval. And if it didn’t that is a problem too. MSM will have to carry a lot of water on this one.

Also the WaPo apparently forgot that Issa was not the chairman of the oversight committee in April 2010. Laying off partial blame on the Republicans is going to be a problem, but this thing is too big a problem for the MSM to ignore because it involves one of the things they hate most, no not drugs or gangs but guns. It is hard to run a guns = racism campaign if you are busy letting them fall into the hands of stone cold killers.

The Lamestream Media can’t touch this without exposing the paucity of “the progressive narrative”, and that – in turn – would lead to mass journo-listic suicide – or whatever the equivalent to suicide is called when you face job discipline after writing a story exposing the crudeness and lack of character expressed by your employer’s political viewpoint.

So it looks like the Mexican authorities either have a list of the firearms involved or someone is confirming serial numbers for them. This means that on the international scene this story is not going to fade away. Also there is a possibility that some of the guns are going to show up in criminal activities on the US side of the border. My favorite lede, “How many people died because of Watergate?” More and more the rumors of panic in the upper levels of the Obama administration are starting to look true. I’m stocking up on the popcorn and I’m saving to buy DVD of Holder doing the perp walk if it comes about.

My issue is the MSM belief that the 7.62×39 cartridge in the AK-47 is “high-powered”. Hell, the bog-stock deer rifle cartridge here in VT, the venerable .30-30 Winchester, has more energy at the muzzle than an AK. I hunt with a .270 Winchester and the only current military rounds (allows me to exclude .30-06) with more power than that are designated sniper rounds (.300 Win Mag, .338 Lapua Mag, and .50 BMG).

No, it’s all about how scary the weapon looks to the MSM. Even if I took one of them out to the range and showed them that the AK is a 100-yd gun at best while my Remington Model 760 is an 400-yd gun at minimum they’d still rate the AK scarier just because of that banana magazine.

At the same moment (2009) the “Gunrunner” hoax was being hatched, the Obama administration was pushing a full court press on the themes linking violent rhetoric, guns, and the Right. Early 2009 we were told by Hillary’s State Department that guns from the USA were fueling the Mexican Drug violence. At the same time Homeland Security’s Napolitano trotted out the memes that the gravest dangers of terrorism were posed by returning gun-crazy US vets and Rightwing Christian militias. Nancy and Barack were hammering the theme that the nascent Tea Party combined all the above themes – they were white gun lovers, racist, comprised mainly of anti-government Christians, militia types, many vets, and they employed “extremist” “racist” and “violent” rhetoric. It Is also notable that the MSM went along for the ride and served as the administration’s Pravda to serve up and endlessly repeat these lies, hoaxes, and slanders to weave the entire propaganda scheme together.

Could any doubt remain that there was widespread and relentless cooperation between the Obama administration, State, DoJ, DHS, and the Dems in Congress and the Senate to “sell” this treasonous scheme to the public??? There is no doubt in my mind that this entire enterprise was orchestrated from the top by Obama, Emanuel, and Axelrod, Pelosi, Reid, Napolitano, Clinton, Holder, and all the MSM publishers.

As Blert noted this is obviously an impeachable offense. If ever there one, this a situation that calls for an independent counsel. Whether this crime is prosecuted is a test case of whether we are a nation of laws anymore. This is much,much bigger than Watergate. To pull off this stunt, not only Buraq, but lots of folks in this administration, in the FBI, Homeland Security, the DOJ, and the ATF knowingly engaged in criminal activity and all should be held accountable. Good riddance all.

Those in the media who try to cover this up, should be called out. And so should any Republican who tries to diminish the severity or culpability of this crime. People are dead because of what this bunch of traitorous scumbags in the White House tried to foist on the American people. There is no good way to explain it and no way to spin it.

Something that hasn’t been talked about too much is, the dealers that sold these guns knew they were straw-man purchases, and told the BATF. But the BATF told them to go ahead and sell them anyway. I think the original plan was to let these guns go to Mexico, then expose it as crooked dealers selling guns to anyone. Obama told the Brady group they were working on gun control “under the radar”. I suspect this may have been part of the plan. I wouldn’t be surprised to see everyone’s finger prints on this from the top down, including Hillary’s.

Gunwalker is an impeachable offense for many reasons. The most important is that a person stupid enough to think it would work as intended is not intelligent enough to be making any decisions for this country. However, the MSM line will be that Obama is too smart to have conceived/approved such a scheme. A response to that line would be to that sociopaths, even if intelligent, often act very stupidly. Take your choice: sociopathic or stupid.

“High crime and misdemeanor” is whatever the majority in Congress decide it is.

If Obama went out in broad daylight and robbed a bank at gunpoint and shot three people dead while cameras from all three networks televised it live and interviewed him about it afterwards where he plainly admits it, and that again he admitted it in a court of law and was found guilty of the criminal statues, it is not clear that constitutionally or politically it would mean his removal from office.

Now, if the high crime is subverting our neighbor to the south without Congressional mandate, you might have something, I suppose.

If the RNC was awake at the switch they would be producing commercials with images of lids being lifted from cans and rocks being raised so that flashlights can be shined on what lies beneath. The two campaign themes should be “We need to know what crimes they committed” and “The Truth Shall Make You Free.”

@ 10. Captain Ned. The only good thing about that particular Lamestream mindfart is gang-bangers and vacos think the same way. Yes, they pop huge numbers of rounds, but frequently – not always – the damage is more cosmetic than traumatic. Just saying.

Oh, our “press” is so busy watching missiles POUNDING SAND. In Libya. Where it’s absolutely artistic the way we’re moving sand around. If sand dunes didn’t exist previously to this … we’d be onto some new invention.

However, we can’t seem to find a guy who wears dresses. Lives in tents. Doesn’t use telephones. So, perhaps, what we should do, there, is send in Western Union: “TELEGRAM”

Granted, because Nixon didn’t have the political ability of an LBJ arguably Watergate contributed to the several millions of deaths from the totalitarian takeovers in SE Asia after the Vietnam defeat. And others have argued that since the Dem’s hearts were in the right place their refusal to fund an ally doesn’t make them responsible.

Back around 1977 a C-54 landed unexpectedly at Clinton Sherman AFB, OK., a closed USAF base. There were people there, though, because some of the buildings had been rented out to oil companies. The arrival of the airplane was unusual enough in its own right, but when the aircrew jumped out and began running away that really got people’s attention.

The C-54 had suffered a serious inflight problem, a fire, and had to land. And the aircraft was found to be stuffed full of “mary jane.” The real owner of the aircraft turned out to be the US Government, which had been deliberately renting the aircraft out to drug smugglers so to enable them to be tracked.

Even before GPS it is not hard to imagine a tracking device secretly installed in a C-54 deliberatly rented to drug gangs. But how you would track drug gangs using weapons that were not even ever in the hands of the U.S. government and were not very susceptable to having tracking devices installed is a good question. Completely aside from thousands of weapons ending up in the wrong hands, this op appears to make the Bay of Pigs look like Desert Storm in comparison.

Originally this story was not broken by CBS, no matter how they try to steal the credit now. I first started hearing rumors about it via emails in early 2010. The most comprehensive (if also strident) source with the longest coverage is probably http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/

This scandal is not merely impeachable, it is treasonous. The original operation doubtless was intended to achieve a number of goals, and Obomber’s supporters will try to cop a plea admitting only what they must.
This operation began in 2009 about the same time as DHS and BATFE began agitating loudly that it was necessary to restrict the sale of guns to law-abiding American citizens because of all the guns going to Mexico. Gunwalker was partly intended to provide the evidence supporting the intended attack on the Second Amendment. It also provided a plausibly deniable form of support for the Mexican Narco-nihilists. These gangs are also deeply connect to the operation bringing illegal aliens into this country to vole for the Democrats, and their eventual Reconquista of our Southwest. These foreign intruders could provide a base of Obomber’s desired private army. It is also very likely that certain ATF and DOJ officials may have received some of that plata for their role. If this operation had not blown up, it would have continued to grow and expand. This may be seen as the early stages of a guerrilla war against America, waged by the American government.

What’s the chance the legacy media (how’s that for a contradiction in terms?) will cover this? Possibly the WaPo, because it’s a company rag for politicians, but the NYTimes? Extremely unlikely. So it officially never happened. F

What the MSM is attempting to do and what they are succeeding at doing is getting a wider and wider spread. They tried like heck to keep Democrats in control of the US House of Representatives and failed big time. They spin poll reports by reporting how many people “like” Obama as opposed to how many think he is doing a good job, and how many people think this country is heading in the right direction. So they are trying to tiptoe around or throw Red Herrings to kill the “Fast & Furious” Fiasco. These moves are generating blow back already.
Also you can expect State and Local law enforcement to not only not cooperate with the Feds but actually start arresting them in the future. Governors and State Legislatures are that p’d off.

I would be very surprised if anyone walked in an payed retail for that many guns. the cartels are not stupid and would know you cannot buy AK47′s by the score under the radar from legit gun dealers without raising a flag so you can bet part of this scheme involved somebody somewhere taking a bribe if only to gain the confidence of the cartels. follow the money and figure out where it went and I will bet it did not end up in the US Treasury, at least not all of it. Stupidity is not an impeachable offense but corruption is.

This p is unlikely to end with the interim ATF chief taking one for the team as he probably realizes that if he resigns an indictment will not be far behind if only to completely discredit him and build a firewall for higher-ups.

“Nixonian”…”impeachable”…”treasonous”…”attack on the 2nd Amendment”…and so forth.

Maybe this Gunwalker “fiasco” is all that and more. But my bets are that in a month or two from now (if even that long), nobody will remember anything about this matter. The news cycle will have moved on to the next “mass distraction,” and nothing will come of it, and the people currently in office will still be in office.

Bread and circuses. Who supplies the circuses? I think the term is “access” jounalism. If you want good copy it helps to know the fast crowd and know the players by their first names. It helps your column if you can call “Whitey” Bulger, Jimmy.

The press and law enforcement are two things every player must know how to game. The bad guys know that the terms “informer” and “source” can denote two way relationships, both with the law enforcement and the press. Just who runs who might be a matter of opinion, and we might shake our heads at the fact. The problem is maybe it’s always been like that. All efforts to find a systems solution to the problem of corruption can only go so far. In the end it comes down to the men in the system, the prevailing organizational culture. To change it you have to go up against the men and the culture.

This means that all reform is hard because it ultimately requires individual action. People must be willing to take huge risks, imperil their career and their lives — and families lives — in efforts nobody will thank them for. There’s probably no such thing as an incorruptible system that will keep everyone honest in spite of himself.

The real marvel is why there are any crusaders left at all, given how thankless the job actually is. Although we occasionally recognize the outstanding person who comes to everyone’s attention, it is the risk taken where nobody sees it that statistically saves us all. And why do they do it? My guess is that most do it for their own self-respect. You couldn’t pay them enough money to do it for cash.

Gunwalker is hair-on-fire, french-fries-up-your-nose insane. For that reason alone it bids fair to cause blockages somewhere in the intestines of progressive agendas. The gun control lobby for one should suffer a colonic seizure.

Didn’t Melson claim he went to Radio Shack. Where he bought components and batteries. And, he turned this into some sort of GPS device. Which got shoved into the rifle butts? But they failed to work? Or the batteries conked out too soon?

Pretty much everyone above is right. It was known in the blogosphere long before the MSM admitted it. They are covering up as hard as they can. If it came out in full, if we were still of country of laws and not men; there would be amazing repercussions that would include impeachments [plural deliberate] along with imprisonments. However, that condition does not apply. In Re: “Plomo o plata.”; with this group of dictator wanna-be’s, do not assume automatically that there is not someone who aspires to be the new Lavrenti Beria who knows what wet work is. The company that holds Kenneth Melson’s life insurance policies is in for a loss, I suspect.

With a State-controlled media that is doing its best to protect the regime, and Democrat control of the Senate preventing any action against any Democrat for any reason, and with the majority of the Republican Party wanting only to lick the boots of the Left …. the odds are that other than Mr. Melson, the entire regime will come out unscathed.

I note that so far, we have a regime whose Congressional party will not even offer a budget for consideration. We have a regime which asserts a right to enter into a war of aggression with a foreign country in defiance of both the Constitution and the law of the land. And apparently is getting away with it. Now we have something I first heard of today. It is being proposed that the President has the power to ignore the debt ceiling and to continue to issue debt [and spend] in defiance of Congress. In other words, Congress has no control or influence on spending.

@ #10, Captain Ned: Then, too, liberals have no concept of the relationship of bullet design to lethality. Most reasonably powerful, reasonably accurate and reasonably reliable rifles with state-of-the-art bullets will out perform any “semi-auto assault rifle” (snicker) with military-issue rounds. My Ruger mini-30 loaded with 7.62×39 (AK-47) rounds hand loaded with Hornady SST bullets would probably be more lethal at 50 yards than your .270 loaded with plain old solid bullets (never mind that you probably don’t use such crude technology) which would result in a through-and-through wound channel with most of your extra muzzle momentum wasted behind the target. It’s not all muzzle velocity and extreme range. For example, there’s the fact that I have 10 round magazines and can pump out more than you can and faster, too, and my barrel doesn’t heat up as fast, and… But, hush!, don’t tell the MSM!

I recall the lachrymose editorials, TV serials and books that came out in the wake of Watergate. How RM Nixon, Haldeman, Dean and Gordon Liddy all set out to destroy the US republic merely by comitting an act of burglary. But now we have a plot, that given the murderousness of the Mexican gangs and clear treasonous intent, and which is therefore orders of magnitude worse, the same Wapo and NYT that indulged in so much bathos in that era, cannot find any gumption to investigate. Something very strange has happened in the US, which has now some of the most immoral people to have ever occupied high office ensconced in government.

Issa needs to get out front here. Sue the Washington Compost for several billion dollars. The Compost barely pays for ink and paper so they will either have to prove what they say is true or give up whoever planted the story. Either way unravels the story a little more. No deepthroat no WaPo and Nixon is still POTUS.

As far as impeachment, impeachment is a political act, NOT a criminal one. Conviction is the criminal portion of the process. Both Johnson and Clinton were impeached because they pissed off the House of Representatives. Neither was convicted because the Senate didn’t feel pissing off the House was a crime. That might be because the Senate does it almost daily.

Any officer of the US Government may be impeached. If they are convicted by the Senate, they get put on the street where the law can get them. POTUS is above the law. So are Cabinet members.
If Holder stepped up tomorrow and said, “Yes, gunwalker is MY plan and it was a good one. It fell apart because the field weenies lost control”, Nobody could arrest him. Nobody could even charge him. That would kick over a whole box of snakes, so they are looking for a scapegoat. IIRC, ATF is under Justice, so Holder can’t fire the guy. He can ask for his resignation and transfer him if he doesn’t give it up.

Meanwhile, my brother just found out about the EPA pulling all the real light bulbs from stores. He wants to start smuggling them in from Mexico. We are thinking boat here. Might be able to corner the market. At least for a while.
“psst… Hey buddy, you wanna buy a light bulb?”

As far as shooting down helios, it isn’t the size of the bullet but where it hits. The skin on a Helio is thinner then a beer(soda pop if you’re old like me) can. FOD from rotor wash isn’t unknown. A pellet gun will penetrate the skin up close. That is why the important parts are armored. That armor is not so good.

Quietly waiting for the next administration to consider honoring the extradition request from the sovereign state of Mexico. Mexico has honored requests for drug cartel operators in the past. Let’s see if the process is really mutual.

I want to know why a drug cartel worth millions (if not billions) is in capable of making their own AKs instead of buying them across the boarder. This whole thing stinks on so many levels it makes no sense.

I don’t think it’s at all clear or obvious this thing came straight from Barry. That’s why we need an investigation. Sadly, there’s no way Barry will be held accountable even if he did authorize this operation. Hell, he could’ve drawn it up himself and been down there selling the guns personally and he won’t take the fall. Not gonna happen with the first black president.

What COULD happen is that we get rid of Holder. That’s something, at least, and I could see Holder as the one authorizing this fiasco. It’s going to take steel spines to get that far, though, and there’s a shortage of backbone in the GOP as of late.

Manufacturing firearms in quantity with decent quality requires a heavy investment, comparatively long lead times, and leaves you with a asset that is fixed in place that is relatively easy to find and destroy. Most of the firearms in Mexico used by the cartel are probably shipped in from outside sources in bulk buys by the big boys, but you have the small fry who are trying to work up to bigger things who can’t afford the bulk buys. There is always a demand for illegal firearms in Mexico and it is not just from the cartels. It has been a three way trade, guns for cash, cash for drugs, guns for drugs, drugs for cash. Now people smuggling is making it a four way market. It is more efficient for the cartels to buy arms than to try and make them. It is speculated that the reason Hugo Chavez wanted to start making AK’s in his country was to sell them on the drug market. A cartel buyer could go to his country and do one stop shopping for guns and processed drugs.

The only way the prosecution of this crime falls down the memory hole is if the Republicans let it happen. The Republicans in the House have sufficient investigative powers to ride this as long as it takes. And we need to remind, loudly and forcefully, those who shirk from prosecuting this crime that they are as complicit as those committed the crime in the first place. They will be aiding and abetting those who want to undermine the rule of law and take down this country.

Yes, impeachment is a political process, but the politics of impeachment can swing both ways. If the Republicans beat this drum loudly and long enough, the Senate Democrats, many of which are up for re-election, will be forced to cave. It’s all up to will and fortitude of the Republican party.

w@31: To change it you have to go up against the men and the culture. … This means that all reform is hard because it ultimately requires individual action.

To that I would add that the stakes have to be high enough – or maybe ‘properly configured’ is the better way to describe the stimulus necessary to overcome the larceny innate to the American psyche.

I have known only one person who could be described as purely honest (I’m guessing there might be a few more) – the rest make judgment calls using cost-benefit calculations. The legal system prosecutes the tip of the iceberg. (Abramoff and Enron decided to ‘go big.’ They got caught while how many use their heads and fly under the radar?) Those of us who occupy the existential space in the middle know this very well. Self respect is a luxury on the Maslow pyramid – the next level above sense of belonging and connection. Consider Erin Brockovitch – from rebel to ‘consumer advocate.’ That’s puts her in hated Nader territory. Consider the chemist who went against the tobacco companies. Consider Bobby Kennedy and his assault on the mob. They became more polite – learned how to use the salad fork.

These things aren’t easy. Everybody knows the dialogue – used to be in all the movies: what about your family? Little Timmy can’t eat self respect.

“You can’t cheat an honest man. He has to have larceny in his heart in the first place.” – W.C. Fields

Whipsnade: As my dear old grandfather Litvak said (just before they swung the trap), he said “You can’t cheat an honest man. Never give a sucker an even break or smarten up a chump.”

Lordy, I miss ol’ W.C., I mean, we used to reserve that kind of character for the movies to be laughed at and learned about, the better to avoid, instead of electing them to the white house.

Whipsnade: This way, ladies and gentlemen, this way. Right up on this platform. The world’s greatest novelty. The Pronkwonk Twins! Elwood and Brentwood. Elwood is ten minutes older than Brentwood and has been in a hurry ever since. Ladies and gentlemen, Brentwood is the smallest giant in the world, whilst his brother, Elwood, is the largest midget in the world. They baffle science.

“Money is pouring in” from investors even though shale gas is “inherently unprofitable,” an analyst from PNC Wealth Management, an investment company, wrote to a contractor in a February e-mail. “Reminds you of dot-coms.”

“The word in the world of independents is that the shale plays are just giant Ponzi schemes and the economics just do not work,” an analyst from IHS Drilling Data, an energy research company, wrote in an e-mail on Aug. 28, 2009.

……….

“And now these corporate giants are having an Enron moment,” a retired geologist from a major oil and gas company wrote in a February e-mail about other companies invested in shale gas. “They want to bend light to hide the truth.”

Unsk @ 45: “It’s all up to will and fortitude of the Republican party.”

47. Kinuachdrach “So you’re saying that it’s all over?”

Maybe not. We will find out at the Republican convention in 2012.
If one of the RINO’s wins the nomination, then yes it’s all over. The opportunity for change within the system has been missed. The best that will come out of the 2012 election is replacing a crony socialist with a crony capitalist.
Throwing out the crook with the (D) and replacing him with a crook with a (R) won’t save America and makes the next civil war inevitable.
I see Palin and Cain as the only opportunities to break the cycle. Any Professional politician that gets far enough up the crony chain to seek the nomination has been bought and sold enough time to have their own personalised pawn shop bar code tattooed on..

J@48: That is, if you managed to cheat him, it must be because he deserved it.

Not where I was going (although there’s a couple different directions in that post.) Americans have always leaned in the ‘whatever it takes’ direction. And it took quite a lot to settle this country. The ‘larceny’ always had its limits – until the controls broke, which is where we are today.

Impeachment? Its murder isnt it? If a kid gets in a car race and kills a bystander then he ( its always a he, why young males are so stupid is anyone’s guess) can be charged with murder. He killed someone while breaking the law. Some lawyer probably knows the clause that seems to be latin for being an idiot with predictable consequences.

“And when is the last time that a member of the Political Class had to face the same legal consequences for their actions that those of us who are not of the Nomenklatura would face for the same acts?”
At this point in time Kahn seems to be in that hot seat. Although that issue is far from settled. He has the money to buy a shield for his locator and a unit to put out a false signal. After that it’s just a cab ride to the closest small airport, a small plane flight to an international airport, where he gets on that freedom bird. At a public restroom in one of the airports an employee meets him with a Dremel tool and that is the end of the matter.
So, yes, the establishment protects it’s own. Unless that person turns on them.
Which is why they fear people like Cain and Palin.
The FBI is very effective when they go hard after someone. Owning the people at the top keeps the FBI leashed. Holder has oversight of most, if not all the major Police organizations in America.

Stoi, The level of willingness of the Republican candidates to pursue Operation Gunrunner, the fraud of the TBTF, the Fed, the Treasury, the SEC, the EPA and other misadventures of this Administration needs to be a litmus test by which those candidates are judged. If a candidate is not willing to forcefully prosecute, then that candidate need to be harshly criticized in the most vehement terms and his or her career abruptly ended.

People like Cowboy in the last thread wondered if we will ever get America back. We will only get America back when the Republicans start representing us again and defending our liberties and the Constitution. For too long the establishment wing of the Republican Party has been the protective buffer blocking any real investigation of treasonous and unconstitutional conduct of the Left. That must end. Soon.

Besides Melson ther is David Ogden,former deputy att. general, who transmitted the orders to ATF field agents. He submitted his resignation in ca. Sept. ’09, citing differences with Holder in the management of the justice dept. Do you reckon he had a bellyful of this criminal enterprise? Expect he could and likely would give explosive testimony to Issa’s committee, assuming he doesn’t “commit suicide.”

55. Unsk
I think it will be pursued. Not for justice but for politics. That means timing is critical. To soon and the voters will forget. To late and Holder can spin it to increase the sympathy vote.
Holder has a valid beef. IF the field agents had kept track of the guns, it ( Fast and Furious) would have been a rousing success. One of the worlds greatest ‘stings’. I think the only reason why the agents havn’t been hung out to dry already is the reams of CYA memos explaining why it wouldn’t work. As a former bureaucrat I understand how that works. Holder exemplifies the lack of management training in this administration.
When the minions are kicking back in the traces, you replace them. If someone believes they can’t do a job, they can’t. Assigning them the task anyway just produces a poor effort with even worse results. The ATF and Border Patrol agents that fired off memos explaining why the plan wouldn’t work should have been transferred to Alaska. Let them guard the Alaska-Canadian border. Transfer trouble makers in from elsewhere to run the sting. That way when the wheels come off, there are scapegoats available. Management 101. Always have a patsy available to feed your enemies.

How do you propose field agents track these weapons? There were thousand of weapons purchased by multiple people. Where are you going to get the manpower to watch these people 24×7? Follow every vehicle that could be carrying weapons every time they leave the premises, follow them unobserved into Mexico, perhaps into a walled compound?

If the plan was to break the cartels, it was hair-brained. More likely it was a designed attack on the 2nd amendment.

In other words “if they had been omniscient, able to work surreptitiously in two countries simultaneously” well then the program might have worked. You’re generally spot on, stoich, but need to rethink that one.

Interesting speculation. As far back as 2009 I speculated that urban street gangs could become an “unofficial” arm of Oabama’s “domestic militia” that he alluded to in his infamous and puzzling campaign speech. The way I saw it, the ruse will be that, in the interest of “reforming” gang members, government programs would be used to “reorganize” these wayward youths into work brigades, or something, a la Americorps. This would leave violence-prone young men at the beck and call of federal officials on an as-needed basis. They could even be used for flood-control and forest fire fighting to further masquerade their ultimate purpose.

Of course, conservatives have been complaining of the criminalization of policy differences for years. Look at Scooter Libby for example, probably Conrad Black too.

It some ways, Washington is like the War on Terror. One side is at war (the Democrats) while the other side prefers to not make too many waves or stoop to unpleasantries (the Repblicans). Unfortunately, one side is edging toward acts of repression that only risking civil war will correct. this coming election darn well better be honest and square!

As an aside, how come we haven’t read the name of the truck driver who smashed into Amtrak’s California Zephyr? I’ve read how bad the trucking company was and claims that the driver hit the brakes. As to the later, maybe that was just getting a better aim.

Amtrak has been discussed as a terror target for some time now (read “Trains” magazine.) There have been serious bureaucratic feather ruffling between Amtrak police and TSA when TSA did a “raid” on an Amtrak station with armed agents. I give one to five that the driver’s name has at least one “Muhammed” or variant in it.

Whitehall, Kinda funny bout that train accident. The drivers of two trucks following the one that hit the train had no problem stopping and said there were ample warning signs. The news gives names of almost everyone else involved, but only describe the driver as a ” Nevada man in his mid 40′s”. It was noted “authorities refused to give the name of the driver”. Gee, why could that be?

It’s not like they don’t know, or that his family wasn’t notified. He was driving lead in a convoy of three and they know who he worked for.

Lawrence Valli of Winnemucca, Nev., was killed when he slammed his 2008 Peterbilt truck into the side of the California Zephyr at a remote rail crossing on U.S. Highway 95, about 70 miles east of Reno, shortly before 11:30 a.m. Friday. Valli, pulling a pair of empty gravel trailers, applied his brakes moments before the crash but was unable to stop in time, investigators said.